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Fritz-Peter Hager, "Education/Culture", Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. Vol. 2, Classical tradition. Dem-Jus, Leiden-Boston 2007, pp. 136-146.
A. Term With respect to the influence and reception of ancient education/culture (E/C) on the post-Classical history of E/C in the sense of a very general framework concept, E/C is regarded as meaning any kind of intellectual formative process (and its results), whether or not this is initiated or caused by the individual himself or by his fellow human beings, by the divine or by people and whether or not it is co-determined by external (e.g. social) circumstances or historical tradition. Terms and concepts with regard to E/C, ideals of E/C and ideas of humanity from which they emanate as well as E/C content and → curricula (syllabi) are central to the discussion. B. History 1. The Middle Ages Ancient E/C was transmitted to the Middle Ages by a number of late Classical Christian authors who all adapted the philosophical and rhetorical traditions of ancient E/C in a reduced form, tailor-made to fit the needs of the Christian faith and Christian theology, e.g. Jerome, Boethius, Cassiodorus, Isidore of Seville, Benedict of Nursia, Gregory the Great and Bede 315- 342. Augustine is regarded as exceptionally important in the transmission of Classical E/C to the Latin West (especially De magistro, De catechizandis rudibus, De doctrina christiana II 293-303, cf. 2). 1.1. The Carolingian Reform of Education/ Culture Charlemagne gathered together at his court a number of significant scholars, like the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin (ca. 730-804), adviser to the emperor and principal director of education. Their role was to reform E/ C and knowledge on behalf of the emperor and, according to a formulation of Heiric of Auxerre, to supplement the Translatio imperii completed by Charlemagne with a Translatio studii - a transplanting of ancient E/C to the new empire (→ Carolingian Renaissance). Alcuin's student Hrabanus Maurus (d. 856), Abbot of Fulda and Archbishop of Mainz, had an important function as an author and propagandist for the new educational/cultural movement, and this role extended to his position as Praeceptor Germaniae. The Classical educational/cultural tradition had a particularly profound effect in the organization of the teaching of the seven liberal arts which - already known as a canon of E/C in Hellenism (enkyklios paideia, cf. the beginnings among the Sophists and in Plato) and in the Roman imperial period (Quint. Inst. 1,10,1; cf. Cic. De or. 3,21; Varro) - constituted after the Carolingian educational/cultural reforms the general basis for the study of theology in the Middle Ages. They were first identified with philosophical E/C but then made subordinate to it (→ Artes liberales). Alcuin and Hrabanus Maurus wrote about the seven liberal arts (septem artes liberales) (Alcuin in various textbooks on the individual artes; Hrabanus in his De institutione clericorum 3). Alcuin, in his depiction of the trivium (the three verbal disciplines of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric) took his direction from Donatus, Priscian, Cassiodorus, Isidore and Bede, while Hrabanus, in his discussion of the liberal arts, followed Cassiodorus but also in his concept of E/C adopted much from Augustine. A well-known early medieval philosophical-theological interpretation of the educational/cultural meaning of the seven liberal arts is also to be found in the commentary of Remigius of Auxerre (841-908) on the work of the late Roman (5th cent.) encyclopaedist Martianus Capella, De nuptiis philologiae et mercurii, which, couched in allegory and in the spirit of Neo-Platonism, deals with the septem artes 343-387; 3. 99-106. 1.2 Educational/Cultural Thinkers of the High Middle Ages The High Middle Ages produced a series of systems of knowledge and E/C (mostly in the form of encyclopaedias) which - in individual prominent forms of intellectual adaptation - represented in various ways the relationships between the seven liberal arts, philosophy and Christian theology. The recourse to Classical philosophy and its theory of E/C played a significant role in determining the relationship between these three fields. Thus Hugh of St. Victor (1096-1141), for example, designed in his Didascalicon a system for all knowledge in the form of an encyclopaedia, classifying all knowledge into four general fields ('theory', 'practice', 'mechanics' and 'logic'). For the first of these categories, Hugh referred explicitly to Boethius, although the philosophical concept of Aristotle shines through clearly, at least in the areas of theory, practice and logic (dialectic). John of Salisbury, (1115-1180) in his work known as the Metalogicon, defended the trivium but particularly grammar and dialectic (→ Logic) against theological opponents as the basis of higher general E/C and as a propaedeutic for the study of theology, referring here to authorities like Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Martianus Capella and, for the first time, taking into account all the writings on logic by Aristotle brought together in the Organon. Alain de Lille (Alanus ab Insulis, 1128- 1203), in his philosophical-theological epic Anticlau- dianus, in which he referred to the late Roman writer Claudius Claudianus (around AD 400), summed up the seven artes, discussing in the Neo-Platonic spirit of the School of Chartres topics ranging from the arts and science to natural philosophy, and even ranging higher to ethereal philosophy, i.e. theology as the crowning glory of all knowledge. The all-embracing reception of the philosophy of Aristotle in the 13th cent, by Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas led in reflections on E/ C to a strict separation of the artes from philosophy and of the latter (together with its natural theology) from the theology of revelation. According to Thomas Aquinas (Expositio in Boethii de trinitate qu. 5, Art. i,ad 3), the artes liberales, although still superior to the artes mechanicae, are only a preliminary step - closer to experience - to philosophy as pure knowledge and do not come into question as a principle for classifying theoretical philosophy. For educational/cultural theory, Thomas was also important in that - taking issue with Augustine's De magistro and its doctrine of God as the sole teacher - he also accorded to man a co-role in the imparting of truth through teaching (Quaestiones disputatae de veritate qu. ri,art. 1) 388-43254. bk. 1. 2. The Modern Period 2.1 Renaissance Humanism The E/C ideal and E/C concepts of Renaissance Humanism proved to be the basis for the encounter between the modern image of man developing from these origins and the E/C world of Antiquity. The nexus was to be highly influential. The new man is interested in himself as an individual personality and gradually emerges from the political and Church-religious ties of the Middle Ages. "He is imbued with the unique dignity of the human being, who as a kind of second Prometheus repeats God's act of creation and is called through education to reshape himself repeatedly" (Boccaccio). "As man is no mere likeness of a divine archetype, he has a duty to reproduce the whole world and all the creatures in himself" (Pico della Mirandola). From this initial position the relationship between Renaissance Humanism and Antiquity was also moulded. In Antiquity, especially in ancient art and science, the true humanity of man shaping himself in freedom was realized in an exemplary manner. For the Middle Ages, the ancient world of E/C was an instrument of faith and, in questions of secular knowledge, authority. For the → Humanism of the → Renaissance it is a matter of discovering, from individual experience and self-education, Antiquity as a model of a humanity liberated from the preconditions of theology and the Church. The ancient authors ought not to be transmitted merely in a fragmentary, second-hand manner in compendia, but their original texts were to be studied in a philological-critical sense and in the historical context. Antiquity was a model for Humanism, especially from the point of view of its culture of language, writing and rhetoric, which is where the humanity of Antiquity was expressed with particular clarity. These premises also determined the priorities set by the Humanists with regard to the educational content and syllabus of higher general education. Of the seven liberal arts, Renaissance Humanism, emphasized - because of its predilection for education in language and literature - the tri- vium, foregrounding → grammar including the art of interpretation of texts and → rhetoric, as opposed to more abstract dialectics (which was often linked with what was dismissed as scholastic quibbling). In Renaissance Humanism, however, it was not only a matter of the philological-historical appropriation of Classical civilisation, but also of the creative revival of ancient artistic forms of linguistic expression. Characteristic of this were the blossoming of a new rhetoric, the writing of Latin treatises and letters as well as a new high regard for all forms of poetry, which the likes of Thomas Aquinas (following Augustine and others) had still been able to designate as the lowest of the arts. In this way Petrarch positioned grammar and rhetoric as well as creative writing in the centre of Humanist endeavours in L7C. And, according to Pope Nicholas V, grammar, rhetoric, history and poetry were also essential for moral character-building. Polished Humanist syllabi are extant, e.g. from Battista Guarino the Younger (De modo et ordine docendi ac discendi, 1459) and Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (De liberorum educatione, 1450). In the writings of Erasmus, the sequence of Humanistic subjects for study was formulated particularly clearly (cf. e.g. De ratione studii, 1511). For Erasmus a basic education in grammar and rhetoric prepared the way for a philosophical education. This in its turn formed the transition to an education in theology which, even for a Christian Humanist, was the crowning glory of the entire course of E/C. Philosophical and theological E/C were inconceivable, for the Humanist concept of E/C, without fundamental linguistic training; the budding philosopher and theologian was obligated by Humanism to take his direction from the standard source texts 507-631; 3. 176-193; 4. bk. 2 2.2 The Reformation The renewal of the Christian faith and of the Christian Church by Martin Luther (1483-1546) would not have been possible without the Humanist E/C movement with its rediscovery of Antiquity and its tendency, through the appropriation of the ancient languages of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, to gain direct, unadulterated and critical access to the source texts of Classical civilisation. Luther himself regarded the study of ancient languages as useful and important for access to the Holy Scriptures and even fended off attacks on Humanist E/ C (e.g. in his open letter to the mayors and councilors of German cities regarding the need to build Christian schools, Wittenberg 1524). However, it was not until Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), the great-nephew of the Humanist and Hebrew scholar Reuchlin and Professor of Greek Language in Wittenberg from 15 18 as well as a close colleague of Luther from 1519, that a comprehensive synthesis of the thought of the Reformation and the new achievements of Humanist E/C was realized. Already in his inaugural lecture at Wittenberg he outlined enthusiastically the path for the revival of studies and rediscovery of the ancient authors in Humanism, and he also expressed his regret at the contrasting darkness of the Middle Ages and -» scholasticism, a period when Humanistic studies were in a wretched state (De corrigendis adulescentiae studiis, 1518). In the spirit of Humanism and on the basis of a Christian Platonic image of man, Melanchthon also designed his Humanist-Reformation syllabus. It encompassed the study of the ancient languages, with the trivium of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic, but also included mathematics, history and philosophy vol. 3. 7-20; 5. 15-101. 2.3 Rationalism and the Enlightenment The spirit of the Modern Age, which developed through the thoughts and doubts of individuals, gradually broke free of the fetters of admiration for Antiquity and its authority, and scholars came to believe that, with the powers of their own thought and particularly through an empirical exploration of the external world, they could create a new system of knowledge and E/C independent of Antiquity. The rationalism of the 17th cent. and the philosophy of the → Enlightenment of the 1 8th cent. also created a distance between their philosophy of E/C and the fundamental Humanist attitude to E/C. The new view of E/C was no longer primarily interested in language and words but in things and in coming to terms with them intellectually and making practical use of them through reason. Nonetheless, in this era too, the influence of Antiquity on various aspects of intellectual life is also demonstrable. This is already clear in Montaigne (1533-1592), who, in spite of the realist orientation of his thought on E/C, was an admirer of and expert on ancient philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Seneca and Plutarch) and implemented its ideas in education as an art of living (cf. Essais 1,25 and 1,26). It is equally obvious in Descartes ( 1596-1650) who, despite his rejection of scholastic thinking (e.g. the methods that went back to Aristotle), was nevertheless inspired by the spirit of Augustine and by a scholasticism influenced by Antiquity (Anselm) (cf. Discours de la methode 1 and Meditationes 2,3 and 5). It is also apparent in the Baroque rationalism of the didact Ratke, and especially in that of the pedagogue Comenius, for whom secondary school as preparation for university should still be a → Latin school. He recommended not just modern disciplines but also the liberal arts (Didactica magna 20-21) and, despite moralising warnings against heathen authors (ibid. 25), he also always wrote in Latin, with his pansophia influenced by Neo-Platonism (cf. Prodromus pansophiae). The father of English Enlightenment philosophy, Locke (1632-1704), certainly also positioned Humanistic E/ C in the background but still retained Latin (in contrast to Greek) for the E/C of a gentleman (cf. Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 162ff., 168ff.). Even Rousseau (1712-1778), who gave French Enlightenment philosophy its finishing touches, allowed his model pupil Emile, in other respects thoroughly raised according to naturalistic and realistic principles, to continue pursuing Classical studies (cf. Emile 4). The founder of German Enlightenment philosophy, Christian Thomasius (1655-1728), viewed Socrates as the origin of the European Enlightenment and was drawn to Humanism, while Trapp, for example, in Campe's work of revision, discussed the value of Humanistic E/C very critically (Part 7, Vienna/Braunschweig 1787, p. 309ff.) Vol. 3. 21-55; 5- II5-375- 2.4 Neo-Humanism The high point in German intellectual life (1770-1830) in writing and philosophy occurred simultaneously with the flourishing of a new humanism that was now first and foremost orientated towards Greek art, the Greek mentality, philosophy and literature (Hellenism); but just like Renaissance Humanism, which primarily took its direction from Latin, it promoted the return to the sources of European culture in Antiquity and focused on the idea of humanization through E/C by means of the mastery of language. The most brilliant exponent of the concept of E/C in → Neo-Humanism was the language scholar, educational theoretician and educational policymaker W. v. Humboldt. Humboldt's Neo-Humanism was aided particularly through the increased philological-historical interest in Classical Antiquity that initially found expression in a reform of the → teaching of ancient languages and Humanistic studies by philologists and school teachers like J. M. Gesner (1691-1761) and J.A. Ernesti (1707-1781). Classes in ancient literature were to move beyond verbalism and grammatical-rhetorical formalism to an ethically relevant concern with the content of classical literature. This ultimately led to a comprehensive new concept of academic exploration of classical Antiquity by C. G. Heyne (1729-1812) and F. A. Wolf (1759-1824) (cf. his Darstellung der Altertumswissenschaft, Berlin 1807). If F. A. Wolf also in fact expected that engrossing the soul in the world of Antiquity would boost all powers of the mind so that a beautiful harmony between the inner and outer man would be achieved, J.J. Winckelmann (1717-1768) in his Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (Dresden 1764) had already conceived of an ideal image of the art of the Greeks which through the idea of "noble simplicity and quiet greatness" lent great impetus to the general enthusiasm for Antiquity (cf. also his Gedanken iiber die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke, Dresden 1755). Neo-Humanism in W. v. Humboldt (1767-1835) now demonstrated a new philosophical-anthropological basis for the Humanistic concept of E/C that was oriented towards the intellectual world of Antiquity. Humboldt, influenced by Leibniz's metaphysics, to a certain extent also carries to extremes the modern individualism that had already first suggested itself in the concept of E/C in Renaissance Humanism. The sole true purpose of the universe, according to Humboldt, was the E/C of individuality. However, it was because of this modern point of departure itself that W. v. Humboldt felt called upon to emphasize particularly the ideal and exemplary nature of the intellectual world of Classical Antiquity. The Greek poets, philosophers and historians (like Homer, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides and Plato) revealed to him a "pure humanity of mankind, realized for its own sake" (On the Character of the Greeks ... = Collected Writings, vol. 7, 609-616). Humboldt's ideal of E/C itself also took its direction, therefore, from the model of ancient culture. He was concerned with the "highest and best proportioned" education to harness all the powers of man "into one whole". Freedom (from political interference by the state) was the indispensable prerequisite for this education that should be a purely humane education, beyond all vocational utility and beyond all differences in rank and class (Ideas for an Attempt to Determine the Limits of State Effectiveness = Collected Writings, vol. 1, 107). In language and art, in which the culture and education of man were realized, Greek culture was highly significant. In the Greek language there was an ideal fusing of the sensual with the spiritual, of the object with the subject, of the world with the soul; and Greek art attested to a superb training in the sense of beauty and taste among the Greeks. This ideal of education and its ancient preconditions also served to determine Humboldt's curricular ideas, which he introduced into his organizational concepts for secondary schooling. His concept of general education comprised a gymnastic, aesthetic and didactic component, the last of which was divided again into mathematical, philosophical and historical aspects. He was concerned with physical, musical and intellectual education. Language mastery, historical consciousness and morality were the educational goals of this general education (cf. the Lithuanian School Plan, Collected Writings 13, 277L) 6. 177-179. 185-189. 2.5 German Classicism and German Idealism Neo-Humanism as an E/C movement was both framed and borne by intellectual forces and currents which developed their concept of E/C by admiring and coming to terms with Classical civilisation in the same way as Neo-Humanism itself had done. This came about in the E/C concepts and E/C theories of German → Classicism, e.g. of J. G. Herder (1744-1 803), who called the studia humanitatis with Antiquity (Cicero) beautiful disciplines that developed mankind into mankind in terms of language, reason and sociability (cf. e.g. Herder's Schulreden, 1 763-1 802, and his Briefe zu (sic!) Befdrderung der Humanitdt, 1793-9 5 ); of Goethe (1749-1832), who in the classical period of his artistic creativity was shaped completely by the Neo-Humanist ideal of an aesthetically transfigured Hellenism (Iphigenie 1787, Torquato Tasso 1790) and who in his novel of development (Bildungsroman) Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1796), subscribed to an educational ideal of the self-education of man through the substance of the world, something which is comparable with the educational concept of Humboldt; as well as of Schiller (1759-1805) who, in his Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (1793/94), inspired by Classical art and poetry, attributed to aesthetics and to art as well as to the 'play drive' effective in these as a synthesis of the 'formal' and the 'sensuous drives' an importance for the education of man into man of such significance as would not have been conceivable since Plato, either in ancient aesthetics or in ancient metaphysics. The link between the E/C theories of speculative German Idealism in Fichte and Hegel and Classical Antiquity is present insofar as Antiquity itself as a cultural era and Humanistic E/C are held in high esteem, and in that the concepts of E/C themselves were inspired by Platonic/Neo-Platonic intellectual constructs. Thus J. G. Fichte (1762-1814) started with Antiquity as the golden age of the rule of reason through instinct, to which - by way of the superficial rationalism of the Enlightenment - it would be necessary to return again in a conscious science and art of reason (Grundziige des gegemvdrtigen Zeitalters 1804/05). Thus one could take one's direction in one's educational ideal of the scholar, completely in the spirit of Platonism/Neo- Platonism, from the ideas as the manifestation of the absolute (cf. e.g. Fünf Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten 1811). Similarly, G. F. W. Hegel (1770-1831) in his Gymnasialreden (1809-1815) regarded the culture of the Greeks and Romans as the basis upon which all further development of Europe had occurred, and he saw the nature of true E/C in finding one's true self in the ancient cultural legacy as in another person (cf. Hegel's Philosophische Propadeu- tik 1 809/1 1) 403-528; 6. 167-242. 3. 19th-20th Centuries The E/C terms connected with the history of the discipline of pedagogics, which developed around 1800 (e.g. with Schleiermacher, Herbart, Dilthey and in humane sciences pedagogy in the 20th cent.) and associated with Antiquity are treated under the keyword → pedagogy. Conditions for a comprehensive reception of Classical E/C and the intellectual world in the philosophy and pedagogics of the 19th and 20th cents. were not favourable. The major upturn in science and in technology in the 19th and 20th cents., which was also of great importance for economic progress and thepositivism at a philosophical level that went hand in hand with it, both gave rise to E/C theories and E/C concepts characterized by a decisive pushing back of Humanistic studies and of the historical-philological appropriation of Classical Antiquity in favour of scientific and mathematical subjects.This often resulted in full-blown polemics against Classical Studies (cf. H. Spencer, What Knowledge is of Most Worth? 1861; A. Comte, Cours de philosophie positive vol. 1, 1830, 1. Lecture and Discours sur l'ensemble du positivisme 1848). In the German linguistic and cultural area the development of the disciplines of natural science and sociology was matched to an almost equally great extent by comprehensive advances in the so-called humanities, particularly history, literature and philology. As a historical discipline, the study of Classical Antiquity also continued to develop up into the 20th cent., and it covered the most varied of sub-fields. So even in the 19th cent., after the discipline had been founded by Melanchthon and reinvigorated with new ideas by Humboldt, nothing stood in the way of a certain dominance of the → Humanist gymnasium in Germany. Because of this particular method of acquisition of ancient culture and education through the study of Antiquity at the Humanist gymnasiums on the basis of the historical-philological exploration of Antiquity, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), turned away from its Lebensphilosophie ('philosophy of life') and its concept of E/C. The Classical philologist presented already in his first major publication, Die Geburt der Tragodie aus dem Geiste der Musik (Leipzig '1872, '1874), a comprehensive historical- and cultural-philosophical reflection in which he interpreted the further development of European cultural history essentially on the basis of fundamental events, conflicts and antitheses in the art and philosophy of Antiquity. Nietzsche's lectures Uber die Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten ('On the Future of our Schools', 1872) demonstrate the fundamental concern of his theory of E/C: the teachers at Humanist gymnasiums should not pass on their own specialized knowledge of the subject acquired at university as philologists and historians but should take as their starting-point training in the native language and the study of the German literary classics. From this they should proceed to an encounter with the "general questions of a serious nature" to be found in the great writers and thinkers of Antiquity and, with the aid of the two ancient languages, Greek and Latin, help their students master a properly defined language by means of grammar and lexicography. Critical comment on contemporary issues and culture, on the one hand, and concerns with regard to a classical philology operating on the basis of a positivist- historicist spirit, on the other, led to the so-called → Third Humanism of Werner Jaeger (1888-1961) who, by examining the historical origin of the presence of Antiquity in Greek culture, demonstrated the eternally valid models that should help the present orient itself, and in view of which the necessity for a revival of Classical Studies arises (cf. Die geistige Gegenwart der Antike, 1929; Paideia, die Formung desgriechischen Menschen I, 1933; II, 1944; III, 1947; Humanistische Reden und Vortrdge, 1937). In the 20th cent. it was only isolated thinkers and theoreticians of E/C (mostly those still concerned with the study of pedagogical theory) who continued in their theory of or reflections upon E/C to refer to Antiquity, to discuss it, or even to beinspired by it. The discussion of E/C in the 20th cent. - if it related to Antiquity -essentially pivoted around the problem of Humanism. This becomes clear in the influential work by Theodor Litt (1880-1962) on Das Bildungsideal der deutschen Klassik und die moderne Arbeitswelt (1955) in which the ideal - oriented towards Antiquity and its social conditions - of pure E/C as a value in itself, as developed by Humboldt, is confronted by the world of technology as a product of modernity and its knowledge. This is, however, also shown in Theodor Ballauff (1911-1995) in theextensive, problematizing discussion of the concept and reality of E/C as an attempt by man to achieve self-empowerment and come to terms with the world. Following Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Ballauff analysed Humanism and its E/C intentions, considering it a result of the existential oblivion of man which started in European thought with the ontotheology of Plato and Aristotle. Ballauff sought to educate man to a new thinking with regard to being which allows things and fellow humans to be themselves (cf. Heidegger's Platans Lehre von der Wahrheit and Humanismusbrief, 1947, and Ballauff s Die Idee der Paideia, 1952 as well as Systematische Pädagogik, 1962, '1966 and Philosophische Begründungen der Pädagogik, 1966). Josef Derbolav (1912-1987), who also produced various works on ancient philosophy (cf. his books on Plato 1953, 1954, 1972 as well as on Plato and Aristotle, 1979), adopted as his particular topic the problem of the search for a new humanity (1988), and has further developed - also following Theodor Litt (cf. Das Selbstverständnis der Erziehungswissschaft, 1966) - in his concept of E/C the Hegelian idea developed through the Humanistic encounter with Antiquity of "finding oneself in another". He took up in his praxeological refounding of pedagogics, like Dietrich Benner (born 1941, cf. his Allgemeine Pädagogik, 1987), the theory- practice discussion (→ Theory/Practice) of Plato and Aristotle (cf. Derbolav's Grundriß einer Gesamtpädagogik, 1987). Hartmut von Hentig (born 1925) presented in his book Platonisches Lehren (1966) - taking as his starting-point the problems with teaching methods in ancient languages and expressing his support for rescuing the Humanist gymnasium - a theory of E/C directed towards the philosophical questions of Plato and using Humanism as a method (so far vol. 1 has appeared) 244-369; 7. → Artes liberates; → Education/Culture; → Enkyklios paideia → Schools; → university